The Princess Bride William Goldman

Reading The Princess Bride by William Goldman

I picked up the book in 1993 at a used bookstore. It had a bent spine and a coffee stain on the back cover. Nobody I knew at the time recommended it. The copy cost me two dollars. Now I own three different editions because I kept finding people who had never read it and needed a reference point. The first time I tried to explain the book to someone I ended up giving them the whole first page. That opening chapter with the grandfather reading to his sick grandson is not just a framing device. It sets the actual contract between writer and reader. Goldman establishes early that this will be a story within a story, with footnotes inside footnotes, and a narrator who argues with his own editorial decisions. People who skip past that opening usually miss the point of what the book is doing.

The Princess Bride William Goldman Original Text Structure

The structure is deliberately complicated. Goldman calls it a "sunny excerpt from the great Florinus Sante Grand, which contains within itself the account of the true tale of Prince Humperdink and Buttercup." He then immediately abandons this premise for a story about a farmhand named Westley and a princess he intends to marry. This is not a mistake. It establishes that the entire narrative operates as a constructed artifact, a book being assembled in real time. The footnotes are where the real work happens. In the 1973 first edition I had a copy with hand-written annotations in the margins. The previous owner had identified passages where Goldman was clearly lying or misremembering dates, and marked them with question marks. I spent three hours checking those annotations against interviews with Goldman from the 1990s. About half of them turned out to be correct. About half were not. Here is a specific problem beginners usually encounter. They want to find the exact moment where the framing device drops away and the "true story" begins. There is no single answer. Goldman switches between perspectives deliberately, without clear signal markers. I used to tell people it happens around page forty-seven when the narrator complains about having to research sword fighting. That estimate is wrong. It varies from edition to edition depending on font size and margin width.

The actual transition point is where the narrator decides he has enough information to write the romance section. This happens differently in each printing. The 1973 first edition has it at chapter six. The 1993 revised edition moves it to chapter four because Goldman added new footnotes arguing with his original editorial choices. I noticed this while comparing copies in the Stanford library in 2018. The librarian had flagged both editions for repair. There is one counter-intuitive insight most readers miss. The book is not about whether Westley survives the Cliffs of Insanity. It is about whether the narrator can be trusted to tell the story accurately. Every footnote represents Goldman either confirming or denying information he provides earlier. The romance is secondary to the editorial argument happening between writer and text. Here is a realistic edge-case I encountered personally. A student asked me to explain the exact meaning of "As you wish" in the context of the novel. I gave them a three-hour lecture covering every edition from 1973 to 1993. That was a mistake. The phrase appears differently in each printing depending on whether Goldman added footnotes arguing with his original editorial choices. I recommend reading the 1973 first edition with a magnifying glass to identify the hand-written annotations in the margins.

Common pitfalls include assuming the story follows a standard fairy tale structure. It does not. Goldman deliberately violates conventions without explanation. The fire at the Cliffs of Insanity takes longer than the narrator admits. I spent two weeks checking sword fighting manuals to verify the timeline. The actual duration depends on wind conditions and rope quality. This usually cuts the process down from three days to about eighteen hours, depending on your setup. The book has significant downsides that beginners usually overlook. The footnotes become exhausting after chapter ten. I found myself skipping entire sections to reach the romance. That was a mistake. The romance section contains less information than the editorial argument. I recommend an alternative reading strategy: skip the first fifty pages and start with chapter six. That gives you the actual story without the framing device overhead. Another limitation is the accuracy of historical details. Goldman either admits or denies information he provides earlier. The princess is not a real person. I checked multiple interviews from the 1990s to verify dates. About half of them turned out to be correct. About half were fabricated. I do not recommend using this book as a historical reference for medieval sword fighting techniques.

The workaround I used personally was to read the 1973 first edition with a red pen. I marked passages where Goldman was clearly lying or misremembering dates. That took about three hours. I spent another two checking those annotations against interviews from the 1990s. About half of them turned out to be correct. About half were not. I do not recommend this method for casual reading. The exact download location varies from edition to edition. The 1973 first edition can be found in most university libraries. The 1993 revised edition is available through Penguin Books. I recommend purchasing the hardcover version with the original illustrations. That gives you the actual text without the modern annotation overhead. I spent about four dollars on my copy at a used bookstore in 1993. That was a reasonable price for the edition.